[Speech of George S. Hillard at the banquet given to Charles Dickens by
the "Young Men of Boston," February 1, 1842. The company consisted of
about two hundred, among whom were George Bancroft, Washington Allston
and Oliver Wendell Holmes.]
MR. PRESIDENT:--Our meeting together this evening is one of the
agreeable results of the sympathy established between two great and
distant nations by a common language and a common literature. We are
paying our cheerful tribute of gratitude and admiration to one who,
though heretofore a stranger to us in person, has made his image a
familiar presence in innumerable hearts, who has brightened the sunshine
of many a happy, and cheered the gloom of many a desponding breast,
whose works have been companions to the solitary and a cordial in the
sick man's chamber, and whose natural pathos and thoughtful humor,
flowing from a genius as healthy as it is inventive, have drawn more
closely the ties which bind man to his brother man, and have given us a
new sense of the wickedness of injustice, the deformity of selfishness,
the beauty of self-sacrifice, the dignity of humble virtue, and the
strength of that love which is found in "huts where poor men lie."
The new harvest of applause which is gathered by the gifted minds of
England, in a country separated from their own by three thousand miles
of ocean, is a privilege peculiar to them, and one to which no author,
however rich in golden opinion won at home, can feel himself
indifferent. No brow can be so thickly shaded with indigenous laurels,
as not to wear, with emotion, those which are the growth of a foreign
soil. There is no homage so true and unquestionable as that which the
stranger offers. At home the popularity of an author may, during his own
life at least, be greatly increased by circumstances not at all
affecting the intrinsic value of his writings. The caprice of fashion,
the accident of high rank or distinguished social position, the zeal of
a literary faction or a political party, may invest some "Cynthia of the
minute" with a brief notoriety, which resembles true fame only as the
meteor resembles the star. But popularity of this kind is of too flimsy
and delicate a texture to bear transportation. It is only merit of a
solid and durable fabric which can survive a voyage across the Atlantic.
It has been said, with as much truth as point, that a foreign nation is
a sort of contemporaneous posterity. Its judgment resembles the calm,
unbiased voice of future ages. It has no infusion of personal feeling;
it is a serene and unimpassioned verdict, neither won by favor, nor
withheld from prejudice. The admiration which comes from afar off is
valuable in the direct ratio of its distance, as there is the same
degree of assurance that it springs from no secondary cause, but is a
spontaneous and unbought tribute. An English author might see with
comparative unconcern his book upon a drawing-room table in London, but
should he chance to meet a well-thumbed copy of it in a log-house beyond
our western mountains, would not his heart swell with just pride at the
thought of the wide space through which his name was diffused and his
influence felt, and would not his lips almost unconsciously utter the
expression of the wandering Trojan:--
"_Quæ regio in terris nostri non plena laboris?_"
It is also probably true that, in our country, English authors find
their warmest and most impassioned admirers. It is as true of the mind
as of the eye, that distance lends enchantment to the view. There are no
hues so soft and delicate as those with which the imagination invests
that which is unseen or faintly discerned. Remoteness in space has the
same idealizing effect as remoteness of time. The voice that comes to us
from the dim distance is like that which comes to us from the dim past.
We know, but we do not feel, the interval which separates Shakespeare
from Scott, Milton from Wordsworth, Hume from Hallam. We know them only
by those airy creations of the brain which speak to us through the
printed page. Solitude, and silence too, are the nurses of deep and
strong feeling. That imaginative element which exalts the love of Dante
for Beatrice, and of Burns for his "Mary in Heaven," deepens the fervor
of admiration with which the pale, enthusiastic scholar, in some lonely
farmhouse in New England, hangs over a favorite author, who, though
perhaps a living contemporary, is recognized only as an absolute essence
of genius, wisdom or truth. The minds of men whom we see face to face
appear to shine upon us darkly through the infirmities of a mortal
frame. Their faculties are touched by weariness or pain, or some
humiliating weakness or unhandsome passion thrusts its eclipsing shadow
between us and the light of their genius. Not so with those to whom they
speak only through the medium of books. In these we see the products of
those golden hours, when all that was low is elevated, when all that was
dark is illumined, and all that was earthly is transfigured. Books have
no touch of personal infirmity--theirs is undying bloom, immortal youth,
perennial fragrance. Age cannot wrinkle, disease cannot blight, death
cannot pierce them. The personal image of the author is quite as likely
to be a hindrance as a help to his book. The actor who played with
Shakespeare in his own "Hamlet" probably did but imperfect justice to
that wonderful play, and the next-door neighbor of a popular author will
be very likely to read his books with a carping, censorious spirit,
unknown to him who has seen his vision only in his mind.
Mr. President, I dwell with pleasure on the considerations to which an
occasion like this gives birth. It is good for us to be here. Whatever
has a tendency to make two great nations forget those things in which
they differ, and remember those only in which they have a common
interest, is a benefit to them both. Whatever makes the hearts of two
countries beat in unison, makes them more enamored of harmony, more
sensitive to discord. Honor to the men of genius who made two
hemispheres thrill to the same electric touch, who at the same time, and
with the same potent spell, are ruling the hearts of men in the
mountains of Scotland, the forests of Canada, the hillsides of New
England, the prairies of Illinois, and the burning plains of India.
Their influence, so far as it extends, is a peaceful and a humanizing
one. When you have instructed two men with the same wisdom, and charmed
them with the same wit, you have established between them a bond of
sympathy, however slight, and made it so much the more difficult to set
them at variance. When I remember the history of England, how much she
has done for law, liberty, virtue and religion--for all that beautifies
and dignifies life--when I realize how much that is most valuable and
characteristic in our own institutions is borrowed from her--when I
recall our obligations to her matchless literature, I feel a throb of
gratitude that "Chatham's language is my mother-tongue," and my heart
warms to the land of my fathers. I embrace with peculiar satisfaction
every consideration that tends to give us an unity of spirit in the bond
of peace--to make us blind to each other's faults, and kind to each
other's virtues. I feel all the force of the fine lines of one whom we
have the honor to receive as a guest this evening:--
"Though ages long have passed
Since our fathers left their home,
Their pilot in the blast,
O'er untravelled seas to roam,
Yet lives the blood of England in our veins.
And shall we not proclaim
That blood of honest fame,
Which no tyranny can tame
By its chains?
"While the manners, while the arts
That mould a nation's soul,
Still cling around our hearts,--
Between, let ocean roll,
Our joint communion breaking with the sun.
Yet still from either beach
The voice of blood shall reach,
More audible than speech--
We are one."
It is now more than sixty-seven years since the rapid growth of our
country was sketched by Mr. Burke, in the course of his speech on
conciliation with America, in a passage whose picturesque beauty has
made it one of the commonplaces of literature, in which he represents
the angel of Lord Bathurst drawing up the curtain of futurity,
unfolding the rising glories of England, and pointing out to him
America, a little speck scarce visible in the mass of the national
interest, yet which was destined before he tasted of death to show
itself equal to the whole of that commerce which then attracted the
admiration of the world. There are many now living whose lives extend
over the whole of this period--and during that space, what memorable
changes have taken place in the relations of the two countries! Let us
imagine the angel of that illustrious author and statesman, when the
last words of that profound and beautiful speech were dying upon the
air, withdrawing him from the congratulations of his friends, and
unfolding to him the future progress of that country, whose growth up to
that period he had so felicitously sketched:--"There is that America,
whose interests you have so well understood and so eloquently
maintained, which, at this moment, is taking measures to withdraw from
the protection and defy the power of the mother country. But mourn not
that this bright jewel is destined to fall from your country's crown. It
is an obedience to the same law of Providence which sends the
full-fledged bird from the nest, and the man from his father's house.
Man shall not be able to sever what the immutable laws of Providence
have joined together. The chafing chains of colonial dependence shall be
exchanged for ties light as air, yet strong as steel. The peaceful and
profitable interchange of commerce--the same language--a common
literature--similar laws, and kindred institutions shall bind you
together with cords which neither cold-blooded policy, nor grasping
selfishness, nor fratricidal war, shall be able to snap. Discoveries in
science and improvements in art shall be constantly contracting the
ocean which separates you, and the genius of steam shall link your
shores together with a chain of iron and flame. A new heritage of glory
shall await your men of genius in those now unpeopled solitudes. The
grand and lovely creations of your myriad-minded Shakespeare--the
majestic line of Milton--the stately energy of Dryden, and the compact
elegance of Pope, shall form and train the minds of uncounted multitudes
yet slumbering in the womb of the future. Her gifted and educated sons
shall come over to your shores with a feeling akin to that which sends
the Mussulman to Mecca. Your St. Paul's shall kindle their devotion;
your Westminster Abbey shall warm their patriotism; your
Stratford-on-Avon and Abbotsford shall awaken in their bosoms a depth of
emotion in which your own countrymen shall hardly be able to sympathize.
Extraordinary physical advantages and the influence of genial
institutions shall there give to the human race a rate of increase
hitherto unparalleled; but the stream, however much it be widened and
prolonged, shall retain the character of the fountain from which it
first flowed. Every wave of population that gains upon that vast green
wilderness shall bear with it the blood, the speech, and the books of
England, and aid in transmitting to the generations that come after it,
her arts, her literature, and her laws." If this had been revealed to
him, would it not have required all the glow of his imagination and all
the strength of his judgment to believe it? Let us who are seeing the
fulfilment of this vision, utter the fervent prayer that no sullen
clouds of coldness or estrangement may ever obscure these fair
relations, and that the madness of man may never mar the benevolent
purposes of God.